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The science points are valid, but I personally like to drip all my fish. Around 2hrs give or take to fill up half of my aclimation bucket. I have not lost a fish that was alive in the bag. Also a lot of people have had success with the same dump method. I think the plop and drop method would work best if you keep a QT tank at 75 degrees (*mid point for low and tropical fish*) and then use that to increase temp over a few days while in qt.

We did that with the last 2 fish (from the LFS, not shipped, only in the bag about 10-12 minutes)...floated them for 15, turned the bag upside down, snipped a corner, slowly poured one fish into a net over a bucket, put him in the dark tank, and repeated...they are both doing great (guppies)

Remember also to instruct her to take pics of the fish in bag. All shipments need to be documented to make sure the fish arive live and if not you need to document this process of openning the box thuroughly.

Many people utilize different methods... and these different methods typically work, otherwise they'd cease doing it. I used to float the bags and net the fish out and add them to the tank. This worked... Now I drip acclimate them for several hours... and guess what? Still works. Neither method resulted in deaths. I do feel better about the drip acclimation process, though, because it just makes sense that it takes time to get used to different conditions, like variances in pH/GH/KH/temp/etc. In other words, both methods might work, but one, I feel, is less stressful to the fish.

We did that with the last 2 fish (from the LFS, not shipped, only in the bag about 10-12 minutes)...floated them for 15, turned the bag upside down, snipped a corner, slowly poured one fish into a net over a bucket, put him in the dark tank, and repeated...they are both doing great (guppies)

only thing that scares me is that these rainbows are considered a "threatened" species, meaning if any die on me I'm gonna feel horrible